Readjustment
by Michelle
Summary: or, 5 Times Clint Woke Up in the Middle of the Night and 1 Time Natasha Did
1. Chapter 1

****_There has been too much death!fic for me lately, so I wrote this to cheer me up.  
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_Caveat lector: here be shameless, unadulterated fluff. Sure, there's a smattering of angst, but it's only to make the fluff fluffier.  
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_Enjoy!  
_

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**Five Times Clint Woke Up in the Middle of the Night and One Time Natasha Did**

1.

He wasn't sure why he woke up at first; he glanced around for the digital readout of the clock – 2 AM. He noticed that Natasha was no longer in the bed beside him, which in and of itself was not a cause for worry; she usually slipped away in the middle of the night. Judging by the coolness of the sheets, she'd done so a while ago.

As he came more awake, he realized that there was more light in the room than there should be for the time of day, and he searched around for its source, finding a golden glow peeking out from under the bathroom door. He hauled himself out of bed with a grunt and padded over to the bathroom, tugging his pajama pants higher on his hips.

"Nat?" he asked raspily, opening the door a crack and poking his head inside. She was sitting curled up on the toilet, her knees to her chest and her head buried in her arms.

"Nat?" he hurried toward her, squatting back on his heels. He reached a hand out to her shoulder. "What's wrong? Are you feeling okay?" She shook her head and looked up at him, pale faced and terrified.

Clint put his hand to her forehead, truly worried now. She never looked scared, not like this, not even when she was seriously injured. He ran through all the possible scenarios in his head – an infected wound, a flu she'd picked up on the last mission, cancer . . .

He shook himself mentally, brought himself back to the present. "Can you stand? Let's get you downstairs to the med lab."

He started to tug her up, but she stopped him, resisted.

"No."

Her voice was unusually rough, as if she'd been crying recently, a sound he'd only heard from her once before, long ago, when she'd confessed the worst of her misdeeds to him in a roadside motel in the middle of nowhere.

"Please?" He pleaded, knowing she would take convincing. "You don't look good at all. Let me take you downstairs."

Natasha shook her head more violently this time, dropped her feet to the floor. "I don't need a doctor, Clint. I'm fine."

He knew she hated hospitals, and he didn't blame her, but this was going a bit too far. "You don't have to act tough. Everyone knows how tough you are. You can tell everyone I made you go, just please, let's get you checked out."

She didn't budge though, just smiled a bit ruefully. "It really isn't something for a doctor." She rolled her eyes a bit. "Well, not yet anyway."

His brow crinkled and he dropped back down into a crouch in front of her. "Then tell me. What's going on?"

She took a deep breath, in, then out, and she motioned with her head toward the counter top. He tracked the motion, spied a thin piece of white plastic on the counter. He reached out to it, picked it up, and he fell backward onto the floor, shocked. He stared at the plastic stick for a long time.

He considered his next words very carefully, weighing each of his option in turn. Then, before he could make a rational decision, he found himself saying, "Oh."

Natasha snorted. "Pretty much my reaction, too."

He didn't have words for this, didn't know what he was thinking or feeling, and so he just stared, open mouthed and wide eyed at the little piece of plastic that just changed his life.

Natasha broke his reverie with a whispered, "Say something."

"Uh," he was at a loss, didn't understand how this could have happened.

"'Uh' is not an acceptable answer," she chided, half serious.

"I didn't think . . . how did this . . .?" He stammered, flailing for the right words.

Natasha leveled her gaze at him. "The usual way, genius."

"Well, yes, I know _that_," he said, then scrubbed his hand across his face. "I just meant, I thought that you, you know, weren't able to . . ." He was afraid to say it, afraid that saying it might make it real.

She stared at her hands in her lap. "I know. I shouldn't be able to. When they took me, they took that away, too." He didn't need to ask who "they" were. He knew perfectly well what the Red Room was and what they did to turn little girls into perfect super spies.

So he asked, "But then, how?"

"I have no idea, but I am." She looked over at the garbage can, which he now saw was overflowing with cardboard packaging. "I took like, six different tests."

"Those things can be wrong, you know," Clint noted, not sure if he wanted them to be.

Natasha shakes her head. "Maybe one or two, but six? Besides, there have been other . . . signs, too."

Now that she mentioned it, he did seem to recall those signs himself, but he'd discounted them at the time, wrote them off as something else. On Tuesday, for example, when she'd thrown up in the kitchen, he'd blamed Tony's cooking; Clint had very nearly lost it alongside her.

He cleared his throat. "Gotcha. But, still, how is this even possible?"

"I don't know, maybe they screwed something up, or maybe it happened since I'm no longer getting doses of the serum, or maybe, fuck, I don't know, maybe I'm just going to fucking miscarry anyway, oh, fuck." She started shaking then, rattling on nervously, and Clint put a hand on her knee.

"What do you want me to do?" He asked.

"I just . . . Just say something, please."

He stared at her, feeling light headed and out of breath. "I don't . . . I don't know what to say."

She bit her lip, looking nervous. "It doesn't matter. I need you to say something. I need you . . ." she started to add something else, but broke it off in the middle, and it was the crack in her voice that gutted him, took all the rational thought out of him, and brought a tear to his eye.

"Fuck, Nat," he hissed as he grabbed her, pulled her off the toilet and down to his level. She scrambled willingly into his lap, straddling him, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck, clinging and breathing deeply into his neck. He gathered her into his embrace, threading his fingers through her hair, and suddenly, he knew exactly what he needed to say.

"What do you want to do?" he whispered into her hair, and he felt his heart constrict as he waited for her response.

She sat back, but didn't break his embrace. She didn't quite meet his eyes when she spoke, but stared at his chest instead.

"I'm not sure." She ran her fingers over his collarbone, met his eyes tentatively. "There are options. But I'd hoped you would know what to do."

Clint brushed his fingers over her brow, trying to smooth out the wrinkles he found there, then he let out a chuckle. "I'm as new to this as you are, babe. Didn't exactly plan for something like this."

She sniffed and swiped a hand across her eyes. "Yeah. Me either." Her hands dropped to her waist, and behind the pained expression, he thought he saw longing, a desperate glimmer of want. "Do . . . do you . . ." She couldn't quite ask it, but he knew her well enough to understand anyway.

"Yes." It was simple, as declarations go, and he was surprised to discover that he meant it.

She looked up at him, her face scrunched up and tears welled up in her eyes as she curled her fingers around the waistband of his pants.

"Really?" She asked in a strangled sob.

He nodded, feeling wetness in his own eyes. "Yeah."

"It won't be easy," she said.

"Don't care."

"We have enemies," she pointed out.

"We'll handle them."

"I might not even be able to carry it to term."

"We live with two of the world's greatest scientists; they'll figure something out." And when he said it, he knew, without a doubt, that it was true.

She was running out of excuses, he knew, and he could see the grin starting to tug at the corners of her mouth. "We don't know how to take care of a baby."

At that word, baby, he grinned right back at her, heedless of the tears streaming down his cheeks. "We'll learn."

"One of us will have to leave the field."

"I'll take a desk job." Shit, he'd walk right out the fucking door of SHIELD if he had to, never to look back.

"Fury will be pissed to lose his best sniper." She wasn't even really arguing anymore, and they both knew it.

"He'll get over it." He brought his hands up to her face, searched her eyes for lingering doubt and found none.

"We'll be terrible parents," she finished lamely.

He nodded, brushed a tear from her cheek. "Yeah. But we'll figure it out."

And then he pulled her in, kissed her, and the world started spinning again.


	2. Chapter 2

2.

He awoke suddenly when Natasha rolled over him on a mad dash to the bathroom. She'd been doing this more and more often lately, waking up nauseated, and he was starting to really worry about how little food she was keeping down. He got his bearings by force of will alone, and then he was on her heels. He found her crouched over the toilet, heaving. It must have been the fourth time today, and his heart broke a little at the sight.

He wet a washcloth in the sink, then went to his knees behind her. Gathering her hair out of her face, he pressed the cool cloth to her forehead.

"Hey, sweetheart."

She twisted her lips at the endearment. "Don't call me . . ." she tried to say, but was interrupted by another bout of vomiting.

When she finally finished voiding her stomach, she closed the toilet lid and flushed, laying her head on the cool porcelain. Clint wiped the edges of her mouth with the rag while she groaned.

"Better?" he asked.

Natasha snorted half-heartedly, cracking one eye open to peer at him. "Give me six months."

He gathered her to him at that, let her rest her head on his shoulder instead of the toilet seat.

"Have you been able to keep anything down?"

She shook her head, a weak motion against his neck. He shifted a little, settling on the floor with Natasha in his lap, a pose that had rapidly become their most common in this room.

"Not today," she said weakly.

He didn't know what to say to that, had nothing left in his repertoire after a month of this. "I'm sorry" wasn't really right, and English had no good way to say, "I hope you don't punch me for knocking you up and making you hurl." It had gotten worse in the past week; she'd barely eaten anything other than toast and herbal tea, and even that she was having trouble stomaching. So instead of offering another empty platitude, he kissed her forehead and cradled her head in his palm.

"Can we go see Bruce?" He asked quietly, just like he had every day this week. She had said no to the suggestion every day, equally afraid that something was wrong as she was that nothing was wrong, preferring not to know for as long as she could. He didn't blame her for it, but that didn't make him worry less.

But this time, instead of denying the request, she sighed.

"Yeah. Okay. But tomorrow?"

There was a pleading note in her voice, and he felt it hit deep down. If they were going to find out that something was wrong, that they could not keep this child, then at least they could have one more night pretending differently.

"Yeah, tomorrow."

He held her for a few more minutes, resting his hand on the slight curve of her belly, the lovely roundness that had only just appeared. He'd only just started to get used to the idea of being someone's father, and he wasn't ready to give that up yet.

Refusing to dwell on possibilities, he pulled Natasha up to her feet. "Come on. Let's go make some toast."

She smiled weakly at that and let him lead her back into the bedroom. They paused in there, needing to cover up before they could head out into the common area. He handed her one of his old sweatshirts, soft from repeated washings, and she tugged it on over her camisole. She'd taken over this sweatshirt not long after they'd discovered she was pregnant, having few things of her own that weren't form fitting or lacy. She wasn't cold, he knew, could have just as easily grabbed a t-shirt, but they hadn't told anyone yet, didn't want to share this little private part of their lives with the world, not even their teammates, and it was easier to hide her body under the thicker, baggier material.

They'd been careful, played it close to their chests for the last month, a tiny, perfect fact that they could keep all to themselves. They would have to say something soon, couldn't hide it forever; her uniform was getting harder to zip, and it was only sheer happenstance that they hadn't been called up for anything in the past two weeks. Soon, even baggy sweatshirts wouldn't cover her up. Neither one of them had much experience with good secrets, though, and they wanted to savor the feeling for as long as possible. Because, well, once Tony Stark was in on a secret, it wouldn't really be a secret anymore.

She watched him closely as he pulled on a t-shirt and sweatpants over his boxers, an inscrutable expression on her face. She'd changed recently, not just physically, but the change in temperament was slight, not enough that most people would even notice it. She smiled a little more, reached for him more often, touched him in public, or, like now, she just stared at him, watched him move. He rather liked it.

After they dressed, he took her arm in his and let her lean against him as they made their way down to the common room.

They found Steve still there, looking like he hadn't moved for hours, sipping from an oversized mug while he hunkered over a silver laptop. He looked up as they entered, smiled.

"Hey, guys. Late night?" he greeted.

Natasha smiled and waved back, and she took a seat on the stool next to him. "Couldn't sleep," she said, yawning for good measure.

Steve nodded with understanding. "Had a couple nights like that myself."

Clint doubted it.

While Steve and Natasha chatted, he busied himself with the tea, filling the kettle with water and setting it to boil. He was digging around for the bread he knew he picked up the other day when Steve called over to him.

"There's extra coffee, if you want some."

"Oh, thanks," Clint replied, taking a mug for himself. Caffeine never stopped him from falling asleep, and he found the sharp taste soothing. Natasha, of course, would be having chamomile tea, but he wasn't going to draw attention to that fact. "Hey, Nat, have you seen that loaf of bread from the other day?"

She raised her eyebrow as if to say, "Seriously?" but Steve was the one who answered, clearing his throat awkwardly.

"Uh, was it that pumpernickel stuff?"

Clint had bought the black bread especially for Natasha, knowing how much she liked it, recalling that one of her few positive memories from childhood was of helping her mother, her real mother, make black bread.

"Yeah, that's the stuff," Clint said.

Steve scratched his head, clearly embarrassed. "I, uh, well . . ."

Before Rogers could finish his sentence, Clint cut him off with a hand wave. "Right. Got it." Steve ate a prodigious amount of food even on a slow day, and he was a fan of carbs. Clint took it as a lesson that he needed to either buy more bread when he went out or he needed to keep a stash for Natasha back in his room.

"Sorry." Steve actually looked sheepish.

"Don't worry about it. There's other stuff here," Clint said as the kettle started to whistle. He dropped a tea bag into the cup, then poured the water. He walked it carefully across the kitchen to where Natasha sat, placed it in front of her, and she clasped the mug in her hands while it steeped.

Changing the subject for Steve's sake, Clint asked, "Anything new on the radar?" He dug around in the cabinet next to the stove, in search of something else that wouldn't bother Natasha's sensitive stomach.

"Not much to talk about," Steve said. "Even HYDRA has been quiet lately, although Fury's got a team looking into it. But, uh, nope. Everything's coming up roses."

Natasha chuckled at that, poking her tea bag with one long fingernail. "Shouldn't have said that, Cap." She took an experimental sip of her tea and crinkled her nose. Even though he would never tell her so, Clint thought it was cute how much she hated herbal tea, how she insisted that anything that didn't come from the tea plant didn't deserve the moniker.

She and Steve continued to talk, and Clint eventually found a sleeve of saltines that the super soldier had somehow missed. Natasha smiled gratefully at him as she tore open the packet and experimentally munched on a square. He really hoped she could keep some of those down.

A few minutes later, after Clint had taken one of the chairs for himself and eaten a few of the (completely stale) crackers, Steve shut the lid on his laptop and stood.

"Well, that's it for me. Good night."

Clint waved a finger, polishing off his coffee, and Natasha nodded her head as Steve gathered his things. He was on his way out the door, but paused at the threshold, turned back, and said, "Oh, and guys?"

They both turned to face him.

"Congratulations."


	3. Chapter 3

_This is by far my favorite scene/chapter of the fic._

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3.

"Clint. Hey, Clint."

He rolled over and groaned, pulled his pillow over his head, not ready to wake up yet; it felt like he'd just fallen asleep. He'd just gotten back from a week in Algeria and hadn't been able to sleep on the plane because of all the bullshit paperwork he had to fill out. Leave it to SHIELD to want triplicate copies of all paperwork in hand when a team reported back in. Clint rather suspected that SHIELD paperwork was a special form of torture designed to punish him for past life transgressions.

"Clint, wake up."

There was someone poking his ribs now, insistently with a finger. He tried to brush them away, but the damn finger was persistent.

"Clint, come on, Clint."

The voice took on a whining quality, and he finally pushed his pillow aside and peeled an eye open.

Natasha was sitting cross-legged on the bed, hovering over him, her chin resting in her palms.

"Hey," he rasped, finally registering who was waking him up. "Are you okay?" Even though he knew that Bruce had a handle on things, that the pregnancy was being carefully monitored and everything was fine, he still worried.

"I'm hungry," she said matter of factly.

He stared uncomprehendingly, and maybe it was just the sleep deprivation, but he wasn't at all sure why she had to wake him up to tell him that.

"There's food in the kitchen." There was always food in the kitchen, especially now that Pepper knew Natasha was pregnant.

Natasha shook her head. "Nope. Not the right food."

Clint sighed, already knowing where this was going. "Nat, we got like, an entire fridge out there full of stuff you like. Surely there's something there you can eat."

"Thor and Steve ate all the good stuff, and then Bruce came and ate all my ice cream."

"There was, like, two containers in there!"

"He was hungry." Natasha raised her eyebrows. "Just like me right now."

"So, you're telling me there's nothing in this entire tower that you can eat right now?"

"Well . . ." she dragged out the syllable. "There's a ton of food. It's just not the right food."

And there it was. Natasha stared at him expectantly, and Clint sighed again and sat up, slinging his legs over the side of the bed.

"What do you want?" He tried to keep the annoyance out of his voice; he really wasn't upset at her, just tired. "Where am I going?"

"Um, I want French fries and eggs. And some olives." She thought about that for a second, then added. "And a strawberry milkshake."

"Where am I getting all of that at," he glanced at the clock. "3 AM?"

She gave him a toothy grin. "The diner."

He rubbed his eyes, stood up. "And why couldn't you just go to the diner without waking me up?" Even now, he wasn't worried about her going out alone at night. She was more capable five months along than any criminal, common or otherwise, she might encounter.

She stood then, too, shrugged a little and started pulling on her clothes. "Because I wanted you to come with me."

"Oh." He searched around on the floor for his discarded jeans, tugging on a shirt and a clean pair of socks. "You wanted me to go with you," he repeated, the annoyance creeping back in even as he pulled on his boots.

Natasha was already fully dressed and waiting by the door to the room. "I missed you." She already had him, all she had to do was ask and he would obey, but those three little words made him move just a little quicker.

He stepped close to her, invaded her space in the doorway. He leaned low over her, brushed his lips over hers. "I missed you, too."

And he had, fiercely. Separations from Natasha had always been interminable, even before he had admitted to himself why those stretches of time seemed so empty. It had always been part of their job though; they were partners, but they didn't always work together, and it was something that both of them had gotten used to over the years. This time, though, had been the first he'd been away from her for any length of time since . . . well, since they'd found out about the baby. Every moment of the mission, ever single second he crouched on a roof, waiting, watching, every bit of time since he got onto that plane headed east, all he could think about was her. How she was doing, how she was sleeping, how their child was growing, changing, and he was missing it.

So even though he was exhausted and could probably sleep for the next twelve hours, he was content to hold Natasha's hand in his as they meandered down the tower and walked the two blocks to her favorite diner, the one where they served a full menu at any hour of the day or night and the coffee was always fresh.

The waitress (and he couldn't really believe her name was really Flo, but that's what her nametag said and she responded to it, so who was he to argue?) seated them at a booth in the back, their usual table, next to a window that overlooked the street. Natasha slid into the seat beside, and she ordered without looking at the menu; they've been here a lot in the past couple months.

"And for you?" Flo asked him.

"Just coffee, thanks." He was never really hungry before dawn, and besides, Natasha's eyes were usually bigger than her stomach these days, and she'd ordered more than enough for the two of them.

He smirked at the misnomer. No, not the both of them at all. The three of them.

"What are you thinking?" Natasha asked him, and he was struck by how beautiful she was, sitting there in her sweats, hair tied up haphazardly, wan in the fluorescent light of the diner. She looked young, radiant, glowing even, in that way of pregnant women everywhere, and his heart ached to look at her.

"You. Me." He glanced down where her hand rested on her belly. "The baby." He reached out and entwined his fingers with hers, let them sit over the life growing inside of her. They sat quietly for a while like that, smiling at Flo when she brought their drinks and staring out the window, waiting for the rest of Natasha's food.

Suddenly, Natasha went completely still and let out a surprised, "Oh." Her voice was tiny, breathy, and her eyes were wide.

"Nat?" he asked, concern in his voice.

She gasped again. "Did you feel that?"

He frowned. "Feel what?"

He had no idea what she was talking about until he did. It was subtle at first, light, and he wouldn't have though anything of it except for Natasha's reaction. And then he put two and two together and realized what she meant. That was their baby. Moving. Inside of Natasha.

Wow.

No, scratch wow. Holy fucking shit.

They've both got thousand megawatt smiles plastered across their faces when Flo brought out the food, and even though Natasha said, "I guess the baby's hungry, too," and tucked in, Clint couldn't stop himself from keeping his palm pressed to her tummy while she ate, even long after the fluttering subsided.

Eventually, she slurped up the end of her shake and declared, "Gotta pee," and scampered off to the restroom.

He was polishing off the last of his third cup of coffee when Flo came by.

"You or your wife need anything else?"

He didn't bother to correct her, didn't bother to explain that he and Natasha weren't married or even engaged. He didn't even try to explain that they were closer than that, and the bond they'd formed in battles across the world meant more than anything a piece of paper and a golden ring could ever mean.

So he just shook his head. "No, thanks. Just the check, please."

And after Natasha got back and they'd paid, they walked back to Stark tower slowly, his arm across her shoulders as she waddled gracefully as only Natasha could, and they watched the sunrise over the city.


	4. Chapter 4

_Wherein the rating kicks in._

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4.

Natasha was whimpering, and it was like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water on him. He had been dreaming of pleasant things, red hair and pie and arrows, but the moment he heard her moan, he was wide awake.

She was curled up in a fetal position on the bed beside him, her mouth twisted in a rictus of pain, and he reached out to her.

"What's going on? What's happening? Is it the baby?" They weren't so far from her due date that labor was out of the question.

She shook her head though and grabbed at her calf. "My leg," she ground out between gritted teeth. She'd been having this trouble more and more frequently lately, and he wondered if it had something to do with her drastically decreased mobility; he'd been meaning to ask the obstetrician about it. She was accustomed to a several mile run as an early morning warm-up, had continued with it well into her pregnancy, and even though she was walking a lot now, it wasn't the same.

He gently tugged her hands away from her calf, replacing them with his own.

"Try to relax your leg," he mumbled, firmly applying pressure to the seizing muscle. She was still whimpering and jerking on the bed, getting louder as she tried to straighten her leg. He kept the pressure up, rubbing up and down along the muscle, forcing it to unclench.

"That's it. Come on, sweetheart." It was a sign of how much pain she was in that she didn't balk at the pet name, just buried her face against his shoulder. Finally, after a few false starts, the muscle relaxed, and her breathing slowly returned to normal. He kept up the massaging action, trying to prevent any more muscle pain in the morning than necessary.

He pressed firmly up and down along her calf, then moved up around her knee, trying to relax her, calm her back to sleep. But then her breath hitched in her throat, and she began to nuzzle against his shoulder.

This side effect of her pregnancy was definitely one of the unexpected perks, something that had never even crossed his mind before all of this – it took very, very little to arouse her these days. Sometimes, it seemed like all he had to do was glance in her direction and he would find himself pushed into a storage closet or a bathroom or, on one memorable occasion, the break room on the Helicarrier.

She twisted her hand in his shirt, pulled him toward her until he slanted his mouth over hers. She moaned wickedly against his lips as her hand wandered to the waistband of his boxers, and without any other prelude, she reached inside to grab him. He was still half-soft, but she pumped him to full attention quickly, aided by the sounds she was making as she kissed the breath out of him. Natasha had never been shy in bed, but she definitely went right for what she wanted these days.

Not that he was complaining, mind you.

Her belly was too large now for them to successfully maneuver face to face, it had been for a while, so he helped her turn onto her side and positioned himself behind her. He worried her neck with his mouth, rubbing his day old stubble against her as he slowly hiked the fabric of her nightgown up over her hips. She pushed back against him when he dipped a finger inside of her, arched her back and practically purred.

"Stop teasing," she ordered, reaching back to grab his thigh, rolling her hips with frustration. He loved her like this, mindless and out of control, without even a trace of hesitation. He found himself so turned on by it, so acutely hard that he didn't bother to take off his clothes, just shoved his boxers down far enough that he sprung free and pulled her panties to one side, entering her in one smooth motion.

"Fuck," she hissed, and he could feel the first tremors of her orgasm flutter around him as he echoed her sentiment. She'd always been eager for his touch, but her pregnancy had increased her sensitivity, making a mockery of what it had been before. She moaned as he thrust into her, and before he knew it (far, far too soon for him), she was crying out, sobbing her release into the pillow. She cursed again, this time in Russian, then rolled over onto her back to look at him.

"I think you've broken me," she said, deadpan, and Clint tried not to analyze how hot he found her statement. He was still hard, still wanted her, and when he was horny, he found pretty much everything about Natasha enticing. But she was tired, she was always tired these days, and he didn't want to bother her with something as silly as his erection. Trying not to think about his dick, he laid back on his pillow, catching a quirk of her eyebrow that he did his best to ignore. Damn sexy eyebrow.

She snuggled up to him, draped her arm over him, and he willed himself not to notice the softness of her breasts where they pressed against him. When she started rubbing circles low on his stomach, he exhaled sharply and hoped to hell that she didn't notice the way he helplessly leaned into her, his body seeking her touch even when his brain was telling him to back off.

But then she chuckled, pressed lower, and griped him firmly in her hand, and he realized what she'd been after all along.

"Tash?" he asked, not quite daring to hope.

She shushed him. "Just relax," she whispered and leaned in to kiss him.

It was almost too much, the combination of her hand around him, her mouth pressed against his, and the crush of her body tucked into his side. Her hands were everywhere, greedy, grabbing things, and he could barely keep a thought in his head that didn't revolve around the woman in his arms.

She licked and bit as she explored his body, paying attention to all the little spots that he liked – behind his ear, under his chin, the hollow of his throat, all the while keeping up a steady cadence with her palm. He watched her work, aroused all the more by the sight of her hand jerking him off rather than his own.

"Dammit, Nat, gonna come . . ." he managed to grind out, feeling his orgasm twist up inside of him. His hips rose up off the mattress, meeting her thrust for thrust, and he twisted his head, pressed his face into her hair. "Tasha . . ."

"That's right, baby," she encouraged. "Come for me."

She moved in earnest now, brought her other hand down to massage his testicles even as he felt them tighten up, and he leaned into her, clasped her to him. He erupted in one glorious burst of ecstasy, calling out as he spurted into her warm hands.

When he could think again, he peeled open his eyes and found her staring, a smug look on her face.

"Better?" she asked, wiping her hands on the edge of the sheet.

Too frazzled to express himself properly, Clint took her face in his hands and kissed her sweetly, almost chastely. She smiled back against his lips, then snuggled down in the crook of his arm.

As he drifted back to sleep, all Clint could think was that maybe this whole being a family thing was going to work out even better than he thought.


	5. Chapter 5

_The shortest of the parts, and the last of Clint's._

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5.

"Clint?"

He bolted awake at the sound of Natasha's voice.

"It's time," she said, and he didn't hesitate, just sprung into action, going through the motions of the plan they'd laid out weeks ago in preparation for this moment. He helped Natasha change out of her damp clothes and into something clean, and grabbed the go bag. Scanning the room for anything he might have forgotten, he led her out the door to elevator, calling for a car even as the metal doors slid closed.

Natasha was calm for the ride to the hospital, only showing any sign of discomfort during one especially nasty contraction, and even that she weathered by breathing a little deeper and gripping his hand.

He, on the other hand, was the one panicking, the one who had trouble keeping it together. Wasn't the driver going to slow? What would happen if they didn't get there in time? Couldn't they go a little faster? You know, if you took a left here, they could probably cut at least two minutes off the drive . . .

And so it went.

Later, Clint wouldn't remember much of this night, just images really, flashes of frenzy interspersed with lapses in action that bordered on the boring.

He did remember, however, with crystal clarity the moment that he first heard his daughter squawk, a thin, piercing wail as the doctors suctioned her nose and swaddled her. He remembered the press of her slight weight in his arms as they handed her over to him. He remembered the way he looked down at her reddened, raisin-like head sticking up out of the blanket, and the way his heart shattered into a thousand pieces before being reformed from the love he felt for this perfect, pointy-headed creature.

And when the doctors finally finished with Natasha, he'd brought their daughter over to her and laid the tiny form gently on Natasha's chest and watched the two of them relax into each other, learning each other from a different angle. He would never be sure how long he spent there, staring down at the pair from his perch on the side of the bed, just as he would never be sure when he'd started crying, but he knew that he did because at some point someone shoved a tissue into his hand. And it was so absolutely fucking _perfect_ that he was pretty sure he would never recover.

He didn't want to.

Eventually, real life intruded on their nest, and Natasha started to fall asleep, tired out from the exertion. He took the baby from her then, dropping a kiss on her forehead as she nodded off. He stepped out of the room for a moment to look for the doctor (superheroes got private rooms, apparently, even in crowded hospitals), and he discovered the rest of their team in various states of wakefulness had made camp right outside the door. Though it was well outside of visiting hours, he had a feeling no one had figured out how to say no to the Avengers.

The baby in his arms made a mewling, smacking noise, and Steve and Tony shot to their feet, followed almost immediately by Thor and Bruce.

"Hey, guys," he said, but he hadn't really planned this part, hadn't thought that he would have to do this yet. "Uh, well," he stammered, then shrugged, feeling an overwhelming surge of parental pride. "Meet our daughter."

And as Steve clapped him on the back and Thor offered his congratulations, Clint was pretty sure that he'd never been happier.


	6. Chapter 6

_Part the Last. I hope you enjoyed this! Do let me know what you think!_

* * *

+1.

The cries from across the room woke her, but Clint placed his hand gently on her shoulder, pressed her back down.

"Stay asleep, darlin'." He said something about changing the baby, and Natasha sunk gratefully back against the pillow.

She drifted along, floating on the edge of slumber, and each time she opened her eyes, she caught glimpses of Clint moving around the room as he cleaned their daughter up and tried to quiet her. The tiny child was fussy tonight, and she started whimpering every time Clint tried to lay her back down.

"Shhh," he whispered, obviously trying to keep his voice down. "I know you're tired, kiddo. Why won't you sleep?" He bounced a little as he paced, and Natasha smiled sleepily in their direction. She still wasn't used to the incongruous sight of Clint's arms, well muscled from years of archery, cradling the tiny form of their daughter.

"Bring her over," she croaked, then cleared her throat, trying to reclaim her voice. "Maybe she's hungry."

Clint brought the bundle over to the bed, sat down on the edge as he handed her over to Natasha. "I thought you were supposed to be sleeping."

Natasha brought the baby up to her breast. "And miss the show?"

His chest rumbled with quiet laughter as he sidled up to her, slipped behind her back and let her rest against his chest as she nursed. She relaxed into him, enjoyed this perfect, still moment.

She had been so worried that she would not be able to love this child, that she would look upon her and feel nothing except the vaguest affection or, even worse, nothing at all. She had no experience, not really, with the bond between parent and child. Her own parents had died before she ever could know them, existing now only as indistinct presences in her earliest memories, memories that may not even be real.

When she first found out about the baby all those months ago, her first thought had been to end it without even telling Clint. She'd always known that Clint wanted kids, a family; she saw the way he watched families in cities all over the world when he thought she wasn't looking. She had always just assumed that one day he would realize that he could never have that with her. It would finally sink in that she was physically incapable of having children, and then he'd leave her, and she would learn how to be okay with that because she's never wanted anything but the best for him.

But God or fate or a chemical imbalance had intervened, and she found herself huddled in his bathroom, taking test after test confirming the impossible, and she realizes now that she never would have taken those tests there, of all places, if she didn't want to be caught out, however subconsciously. She had her own place in the tower, and there was no good reason that she found herself wandering back to Clint's after her midnight visit to the drug store down the street.

Then, after they'd decided to try, decided to see if she could carry the child to term, Natasha hadn't really let herself think about what it would mean for her to be a mother. She'd never dreamed she would have to consider it, and she has never wasted her time pondering the impossible. Despite the assurance of Bruce and half a dozen doctors, Natasha hadn't really believed that she could have a baby, and even now, there was no good explanation for how she managed it, how she was holding the proof of the Red Room's failure in her arms right now.

She first let herself hope, really, truly hope, on a night when Clint took her to the diner instead of sleeping off his jet lag, and they'd realized together that the fluttering in her stomach wasn't gas after all. She'd been pretending up until that point, distancing herself from the inevitable miscarriage, treating her own life like it was just another role. But then, she felt the baby kick against her hand, announcing its presence to the world, and she'd seen the look on Clint's face when he felt it, too. Something inside of her had softened then, and for better or for worse, she'd opened her heart a crack and let hope seep in.

Even after that, she had been terrified that she would be unable to function as a mother, and even now she can taste that fear thick on her tongue. She would not have even risked it if it weren't for the constant presence of this man beside her, watching her back, like always.

And then, when the two of them became three, she learned that she did, in fact, love this tiny being, loved her with every fiber of her being. Natasha had never felt such joy in her life, hadn't even fathomed that such love existed, as when she held her daughter in her arms for the first time and ran her finger over the tiny features that were half her and half Clint. She was beautiful, perfect, and now Natasha wasn't terrified of not finding it in herself to love her, but not being able to keep her safe.

She probably always would worry.

The baby sighed and relaxed from her breast, and her pale blue eyes started to drift shut.

"Can you burp her?" Natasha asked in a whisper.

"Yeah, give her here."

Clint took the baby for a walk around the room, gently patting her on the back, and Natasha sunk back down below the covers, curling up around a pillow to watch her family.

It was definitely weird being a part of a unit that didn't go out and kill people. Even during downtime, even when they were doing nothing other than eating or watching TV, she'd had that spurious connection with Clint. But now, this was something completely different, new, uncharted territory. She didn't know how it was going to work, didn't know how she would balance her need to clean her ledger with her need to be there for every moment of this child's life.

But she was going to do her damnest to try.


End file.
